Two Cultures of Policing: Street Cops and Management Cops (New Observations) by John Leo

Author:John Leo [Leo, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Political Science, Sociology, Law Enforcement, General
ISBN: 9781351300940
Google: eKs0DwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B075GQ1D3F
Goodreads: 36251155
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

5

A Police Suicide

The social organization of the Manhattan precinct did not differ significantly from that of the Bronx precinct and both shared the precinct street cop culture and perspective. While the event took place in the Manhattan precinct, it could just as easily have occurred in the Bronx or elsewhere in the city. This chapter will continue to point up the different perspectives, or the situational perspectives, of both street cop and management cop cultures as well as how each of the participants in this struggle for control is not able, or able only in part, to evade the controls of the other. It also shows how street cop culture can, to some extent, effectively sabotage management cop culture. The story of this chapter concerns imposition of conventional management controls, practices concerning “gift” taking and its relation to corruption and the relevence of the department’s integrity system as viewed by the street cops. It also points to career path issues and problems in a system where everyone at the lowest rank is a “cop,” but not everyone does the same job. The reactions at the precinct to the event also served to organize a good deal of information on how the organizational structure of policing produces stress, and how that stress is seen as a different problem by street and management cop culture.

One spring day in 1978, around noon, I learned that one of the officers in the Manhattan precinct had just committed suicide. My first impression was that the suicide had taken place in the station house. Since at that time I was working downstairs in the complaint room, but on that day not scheduled to be there until a later tour, I decided to go in to work earlier to observe what I expected would be considerable activity at the precinct in reaction to the suicide. When I walked into the precinct house, I was surprised to find that the officers and civilians working downstairs were talking and behaving as usual and that there seemed to be nothing unusual going on anywhere in the building. At first I thought that no one must know about the suicide, or that perhaps our information had been incorrect. I phoned my informant and was told that the suicide had occurred in another borough when the officer was off duty. The officer had killed himself after other officers had attempted to arrest him in connection with a departmental investigation into his involvement with certain illegal activities.

After more than two hours of waiting, watching, and listening to the various activities and conversations throughout the building, I asked an officer if he had heard anything about one of their officers committing suicide. His response was casual: “Sure, we heard about it early this morning. They came in to look in his locker, but I don’t even know who the guy is.” I indicated my surprise at the apparent lack of concern by him and the other precinct personnel. He replied, “Listen, it would be like my hearing about a cop at another precinct committing suicide.

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